The Book of Goose

by Yiyun Li

I now know that so much of our story began with Fabienne’s exultation and despair, both out of my reach. For as long as I could be the outlet of her exultation and her despair, life was bearable, even interesting, to her. I was the whetstone that sharpened her mind’s blade; I was the orange that she cut into effortlessly. All the same, I could not save us. It was not boredom that defeated us, it was not defeat that made us drift apart.

I have interrupted that living to write: the story of a faux-prodigy, which is the real story of Fabienne and Agnès, as real as on that day when we were in the graveyard, wanting, and unable, to kill each other; wanting, and unable, to save each other.